Netflix’ Recommendations Don’t Always Work

I signed up for Netflix earlier in the week and my first set of movies — Hero, Anchorman and Napoleon Dynamite — arrived on Friday. And, I watched them this weekend:

• Napoleon Dynamite — I hadn’t seen this one yet and felt that I couldn’t hold out for much longer as there were too many pop culture references to it among my friends that were whizzing right by me (not that I was really avoiding it in the first place). And I now know the response in case someone asks “So, you got my back and everything, right?” ;).

• Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy — This is a spoof of 70s newscasts which stars Will Ferrell and Christina Applegate. Well, that’s how the studio would bill it — to me, Fred Willard is more of a draw than Applegate these days (and I mean that as a complement to Willard). Oh, if only Willard could have had the starring role — while I think Ferrell can hilarious, he amplified the role from mere parody into caricature. I really wanted to like this one, but I didn’t really.

• Hero — This is an epic martial arts flick set in pre-unified China. As IMDB puts it, “A series of Rashomon-like flashback accounts shape the story of how one man defeated three assassins who sought to murder the most powerful warlord in pre-unified China.” Now, don’t get me wrong — the movie was beautifully shot and the martial arts were exceptional. And, the sword fight within the falling autumn leaves was stunning and has some fabulous use of color between the adversaries’ red cloaks and the falling yellow leaves. However, I ended up bored by this one; there’s a good dose of martial arts but the non-martial-arts segments just plodded along for me.

I went to the gym this afternoon and, while I was pedaling along on the elliptical machine, it occurred to me that I should check for World Rally documentaries on Netflix.com later this evening. For those who aren’t aware of it, World Rally is a driving sport where drivers don’t race on a track:

Rallying is a form of motorsports that is run over ordinary roads rather than in specialized circuits used in Formula One or off-road environment used in endurance events like Paris-Dakar. In distinction to rallycross in rallying drivers compete against the clock, not directly against the other drivers. And in distinction to rally-sprints, stages used in rallying are much longer (up to 40 to 50 km, average being 10 to 30 km) and special co-drivers are used to call pace notes. […]

Or, put another way, have you ever flipped through the channels and come across a race featuring cars which resemble the Subaru WRX and Mitsubishi Lancer Evo flying along dirt roads? That would be World Rally. In any case, I searched Netflix for “rally” and came across “World’s Greatest Rally Cars”. Well, I was pleased to find that; granted, it was from 2001, but I don’t get Speed Channel on my cable system (the only network which carries World Rally) and I was eager to find anything.

I then clicked through to the category for that disc’s genre (“Motor Sports & Biking”) to see what else I could find. There, I also found Skip Barber’s film “Going Faster”, a film about (you guessed it) how to drive faster. I already have the book by the same name and I found it very useful for improving my times in autocross. I added that to my queue — so far, so good — and Netflix presented me with a list of “Other Movies You Might Enjoy”… one of which was “Kathy Smith’s Pregnancy Workout”. Bwhah?

I suppose that Netflix’ recommendation system tries awfully hard but I guess it has an off-day every now and then ;). I’m not even really sure how it would think those two films are related. I mean, it's not that pregnant women would be autocrossing (as I would imagine that the G-forces could be disruptive to the baby). All I can figure is that a lot of guys that go autocrossing also have pregnant wives… or something?